


Reminisce

by Starlight713



Series: Atom Bomb Baby [5]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Also does anyone at Bethesda know what 20 yr olds look like?, F/M, Just two buddies chatting, Pre-Relationship, Pre-War, Pre-War Memories, Yup just buddies, seriously
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-15
Updated: 2017-01-15
Packaged: 2018-09-17 18:27:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9337532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Starlight713/pseuds/Starlight713
Summary: Lola and MacCready talk about the world before the war, height, and beer.





	

                 “Is that why you were all upset about the beer?”

                “ _What?”_ Lola leaned her pack up against a ruined car and arched her spine to stretch. That thing must have weighed just shy of a million pounds. MacCready stopped just short of her, staring intently. A moment ago, he had been whining about the rain. _Now_ what was he on about?

                “The beer. The other night when we were setting up camp? Before that raider came along and hucked a grenade at us.”

                “There were _two_ raiders.”

                “Yeah, yeah.” He waved his hand dismissively. “Was _that_ what you were all upset about?”

                “With the beer?”

                “Boss, keep up.”

                “Mac, make more sense.”

                “You’re from before the war, right?”

                “We went over this.”

                “ _Soooo_ you must remember what beer tasted like before the war. Was it different? You made a face. Was it better?”

                “You ask a lot of questions.” She opened the car door and slid into the back, tossing her stuff onto the drivers-side seat. Mac clambered in behind her. For a merc, he was about the mouthiest, gangliest guy she had ever seen. He wasn’t half as cool and aloof has he had pretended to be when she’d met him at Goodneighbor. He shoved his pack up against the rear window, blocking the whole thing. Smart. It still didn’t make her feel a whole lot safer about sleeping in a destroyed Corvega sedan, but at least it was relatively dry inside. Rain pinged off the roof of the car and for a split second, she remembered going to the drive-in with her high-school boyfriend. They had been sitting in the backseat of his mom’s powder-blue Coup, trying to hear some propaganda film over the pounding rain. The car smelled like peppermints and cigarettes, but she couldn’t remember the boy’s name for the life of her. Funny, how memory works.

                “ _So_ ,” MacCready nudged her with his shoulder. He kicked the half-broken seat in front of him until it folded over onto itself and made a handy little footrest. She toed off her boots and rested her feet beside his.

                “The beer?”

                “Boss. You’re killing me with suspense, here.”

                “It was better.” She was trying to remember the last time she’d _had_ a beer. For the longest time, it had been rationed because of the grain shortage. On a date, maybe? Definitely at least _once_ after Shaun was born, to celebrate. “More hoppy. Not as bitter or tart—in fact, the Gwinnett stout I _remember_ wasn’t tart at all. It was _robust_.”

                He rested his head back on the seat. “Hmm. Sounds nice.”

                “It _was.”_

                “Must be really crazy to see the world now, huh?”

                “You don’t know the half of it.”  

                “What was it like?” He looked over out of the corner of his eyes and sent a chill through her. They were sitting close in the confined space. She hadn’t realized _how_ close.

 

_Get ahold of yourself, Clover. You’ve seen this man practically naked. This is nothing._

                She thought for a second. What could she really say aside from “everything?” Because that was the truth. Everything was different. She pulled off her jacket and draped it over her lap like a blanket. “People were taller, for one.”

                “What?” He sat up a bit, eying her. She almost laughed.

                “They were. Elder Maxon is really tall right?” Tall and _imposing._ Mac nodded. “But he would be average height back before the war. My husband Nate was six three.”

                “Wow.” Mac had a couple of inches on her (must have been about five-foot-six), but he was pretty much average height for a Wastelander. Maybe a little on the short side. That had been one thing that kept catching her attention—it seemed like everyone in the world was just three or four inches shorter than her brain thought they ought to be. “So you were _always_ the short one, huh?”

                “Hey!”

                “Well, you’re pretty short _now._ ”

                “I am not!”

                “Did you have to carry a stool everywhere you went to be able to talk to people?”

                She tried not to laugh. She really did.

                “Oh!” He jumped and turned to look at her, eyes wide, grinning like a maniac. “Is _that_ why all those old-world houses are so tall? Because you people were all skyscrapers?”

                He looked a lot younger when he smiled like that—all bright-eyed. In fact, without the facial hair and scrubbed clean, he would look _really_ young. That was when she realized that she had hired a merc, but she knew absolutely nothing about him. She didn’t even know how old this guy was.

                “How old are you?” She blurted it out without thinking. That was a stupid question. What did it matter? He narrowed his eyes and asked “why?”

                “Just curious.”

                “Twenty-two. I think.”

                “Shit, Mac!” It’s not like she thought she was headed for the grave, but at least _she_ was twenty-seven. It was only a five-year difference, but before the war, this man would be in _college,_ not killing people for money (she hoped) _._ Something about that just sat wrong with her. She hadn’t meant to, but her grin faded into a frown. He must have noticed, because his eyes bounced over her face and he leaned back against the seat.

                “What of it, Boss?”

                “Just…young. Younger than I thought, anyways.”

                “What, did you think I was in my seventies? Gee thanks, Boss.” His tone was light. She shouldn’t let this bug her. But if he had been around before the war, what would he be like? Not like she knew a lot about him, but he had seen some shit, that was for sure. He talked like he had suffered. A lot of people did, sure, but MacCready was different. Sad, somehow. Raw.

                “Sorry. I just thought you’d be closer to thirty. Or at least a _little_ older.”

                “Not like I’m a kid.”

                “Not now, anyways.” She felt like her grandfather saying “back in _my_ day” but she couldn’t stop herself. The words were already on the tip of her tongue. “Back in my day, you would have been a kid. Hell, _I_ was a little young for my job.”

                “Fighting crime?”

                “Lawyering. Most of the other lawyers were in their fifties and sixties. The head of our firm was eighty-three.”

                “So where would I be?”

                “I don’t know.” Not here. He wouldn’t be in this situation, for sure. There wasn’t a way to say it that wouldn’t remind them both that they weren’t exactly sitting in the lap of luxury. She reached into her pack for some food. In the lunchbox where she stored rations, she had a couple of tins of apples and some jerky. She slid a fork out of the lunchbox and grabbed for a tin of apples. Mac watched her hands and then glanced up quickly when he noticed her looking. She handed him the second tin of apples, and her spare spoon.

                “Thanks, Boss.”

                “Cheers.” The apples were sticky sweet and did not have enough cinnamon to offset the sugary syrup they’d been left in. But still, strangely enough, they tasted about the same as tinned apples had _before_ the war. It didn’t fill her with confidence, but it was better than eating radstag. She still didn’t trust animals with more than one head.

                “What do you think my job would have been before the war, Boss” He popped an apple into his mouth, looking up at the roof of the car. “Bada—tough guy private eye like the Silver Shroud?”

                “Is _that_ what you think the Silver Shroud is? A detective?”

                “He is a detective, right?”

                “No,” she laughed. “No, detectives aren’t vigilantes who run around shooting people. They were usually cops.”

                “Oh. So a cop, then?”

                “No. With your penchant for stealing?  Probably not.” She forked another apple. “You’d either be in college, or a soldier. A lot of people went right into the army after high school.”

                “A soldier, huh?” He glanced over at her out of the corner of his eyes. “Like your husband?”

                “Maybe.” His wedding band was still slung around her neck on a chain, and she could feel it against her sternum, a warm weight. “Maybe not. Who knows.”

                “Well. At least I wouldn’t be a lawyer. I hear those people were nuts.”

                She nudged him gently with her shoulder. MacCready got a good laugh out of that and opened the door to toss out his empty tin of apples. The rain was still holding strong, and when he opened the door, for a second, it was overwhelming. He shut the door tight and locked it again.

                “So, rock-paper-scissors for first watch?” He looked back over at her and his eyes were warm and glinted blue in the dark. When had it gotten so dark? It had been twilight when they’d stopped to get out of the rain. He looked fuzzy—hazy—in the dark. She pulled her jacket up to her chin, suddenly too tired to fight her sleeping bag out of the neat roll attached to her pack. The car had warmed up with the two of them in it anyways.

                “Sure, but only if you don’t cheat.” She held out one hand and he grinned.

                “Wouldn’t dream of it, Boss.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! This snippet actually takes place around the same time as the chapter "Lawyers" in Atom Bomb Baby. I just really like writing about these two talking. 
> 
> Thank you for reading, you lovely, lovely people! If you would like, you can find my new-ish Tumblr here: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/starlightwrites


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